The Geek Forum
Main Forums => Hardware, Software, and Other Imperialist Crap => Topic started by: Username: * on July 11, 2005, 07:20:48 AM
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It drives me nuts when I see things like the 'Geek Squad' or go on http://www.geeks.com and see their picture of a 'Geek'. I mean, supposedly we are all supposed to be suited up in a white button down shirt, black slacks and black shoes. Oh yeah, and a tackie looking tie. Every time I go in to Best Buy and see somebody on the 'Geek Squad' all dressed up I want to laugh and think, "What a sellout!" And I'm sure they are just trying to make a buck doing something they're good at but it's just promoting the symbol of a 'Geek' that the rest of the nation thinks is accurate. It just takes out the individual in a geek and adds a cliche. :x But hey, as long as they think we look like that, the less those who don't will be asked rediculous computer questions. Ahhh, what it is to be a tech support vending machine! :roll: :D
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They perform incredibly reliable and cost-effective and timely service, however.
Especially on laptops.
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I think Geek and Nerd are viewed as synonymous... Just like Hacker and Cracker and elite and l33t.
Most people will just never understand :
eg : http://www.geekforum.org/viewtopic.php?p=44867
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I've always thought of nerds as the ones to wear the white button down shirts, and geeks to wear T-shirts with greasy food stains. :p
A friend of mine works for Geek Squad in southern California. He looks like a stereotypical Mormon while working; it's hilarious.
It's really too bad they don't allow him to do the things he knows how to do, just because it's "not something they do here," and instead has to do the simple, no-brainer things they assign him... i.e. "here, install this mouse" or "this printer is out of ink, fix it." :roll:
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Hey Demosthenes, I just read your rant about the Best Buy incident. :shock: Sorry you had to go through with that. Unfortunately, that's not the first time I've heard of issues like that with BB.
On a side note. Why did you duel boot with 2000 and not XP? Is it because it was XP Home and not Professional? Just curious.
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On a side note. Why did you duel boot with 2000 and not XP? Is it because it was XP Home and not Professional? Just curious.
Heh. It's because XP is a bloated POS OS.
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I figured I would get that kind of response. And I don't disagree. And I know I am not in a forum of Windows lovers. But I am interested in actual logic to back up that statement. There's no doubt that XP is bloated. I mean, you can run Win2000 on 128mb ram with no problem but XP would completely bog down the same system. But, on that note, you can set XP up for 'best performance' as apposed to 'best appearance' and you knock out much of the fuz that hoggs memory. And there is no doubt that XP boots much faster than 2000 and is, in some cases, more stable. And another part of the bloat is the wide array of drivers that XP has in comparison to 2000. Now some might dislike this but there is no denying the ease of use that is attained when you have that much more plug 'n play without having to install drivers yourself.
Don't get me wrong, I am not an XP advocate by any means. And you can certainly say that XP is 2000 with a bunch of unnecessary extras. But I think, with a little tweaking, you can make XP a more desirable OS than 2000. For me, the faster boot, better stability (I know this is not always true) and better hardware and software compatability is worth a little extra bloat. But I am sure I am in the minority here. :D
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I have two primary reasons.
My first reason is just one of simple principle. It is an operating system designed with an "activation scheme" at a core part of it. That means that I am treated as a criminal, even though I legitimately paid for and own a license to legally use Windows XP.
My own personal point of view is that any product that automatically treats me as such does not then deserve to be used. Period. I don't just limit this to operating systems. There are games out there and other products that require "activation" before a user can use them. I won't purchase or use those, either.
I don't care that it's a simple thing to find cracks and/or generated activation codes and keys for such things. It's a matter of right and wrong in my view. That is, it is wrong for them to treat legitimate customers in that manner, and I will not support it by using those products, mostly out of spite. It basically says to me, "Hey Demosthenes. Please do not use this product. We have no respect for you as a customer or a user, so we would like you to instead look elsewhere for your software/gaming/operating system needs."
Not to mention the simple fact that the only people this really stymies are those same legitimate customers. People intending to use pirated copies of these apps or people intending to use them in illegal ways are not in the least inconvenienced by such measures. Yet paying customers regularly run into problems with activation schemes and companies like Microsoft treating them like they're degenerates, and all these people are trying to do is use the product they paid hard-earned money for.
Screw that. We all have our limits, and that goes past mine. I won't support it. Windows 2000 is the last operating system Microsoft put out that did not have such a scheme, and as such it is the last operating system by Microsoft I will have purchased until they stop doing that, period. My XP licenses don't count because I got those against my will (good luck buying a new laptop retail without having to pay the Windows Tax). I also don't count the Volume License editions of XP Pro because those aren't widely available to average individual consumers.
My second reason is more practical.
When I turn off, remove, deactivate, and strip away all the things I don't like, need, or care about in Windows XP, what I am left with is Windows 2000.
You speak of "better hardware support", but in my experience (I work in IT) that isn't true. XP is just as bad as 2000 when it comes to hardware and it's no more stable... in fact, because of some of the extra crap they have insisted on cramming into it as an OS, it's even LESS stable in some circumstances.
Setting up XP still requires a lot of manual driver installation like Win2k often does, it still requires just as much patching (even more lately, it seems, since MS is releasing fewer updates for Win2k in preparation I'm sure for their big "rollup" patch for it before they pull the rug out from under it for good), is just as insecure, just as rigid and difficult to work with for power users who like more control over their computers than the average user, and is frankly, just as butt-fugly as any other Windows operating system... MORE so if you keep the default Fisher Price theme. (http://www.guildhaven.org/images/smilies/barf.gif)
Sure, I can tweak it by putting something like BB4Win (http://www.bb4win.org) on it... but I can do that with Windows 2000 too. Basically put, there's nothing XP has to offer me that Windows 2000 doesn't already have, do, or is capable of.
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Concerning your first reason, I'm with you. I hate the activation process and the idea behind it. It drives me nuts if I reformat a customers hard drive and re-install XP and end up haveing to make a phone call to Microsoft to get some Indian guy to spout off a new key. And this is after I answer the questions of wheather or not I have this copy of XP on more than one PC. I have a work around for this myself but I understand your pricipal behind this and respect it. Honestly, I feel the same way.
On your second point, I once again agree for the most part. When I said better hardware support (I also work in IT) I was referring to things like your laptop. You said it yourself, 2000 was a bit tricky to get to work right on you laptop. XP would have been a breaze to install. And more and more new hardware is like this. And as I said, there are just more drivers pre-installed in XP but that doesn't mean they all work very well. But you are right. Why dim down XP when you can just use 2000, stock.
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I love how changing hardware can require reactivation. WHAT AN EXCELLENT CONCEPT.
If I'm not being cradled entirely in the lovingly overbranded arms of Apple by the end of next year, I'll be genuinely surprised.
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They've confused nerd and geek. The whole geek squad outfit reminds me of a computer nerd.
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Having to re-activate bacause of a hardware change is absolutely insulting!
Quatra, you've hit it on the haed. You'll notice that the Geek Squad guys have to dress up like the characters on Revenge of the Nerds. Now some of them were computer geeks as well but they were definitely nerds. As someone said earlier, computer geeks ofter wear t-shirts, not a button down dress shrit and tie. And, one of my points, is that a computer geek can look like anything a wear anything. They don't have to stereotype us like that. That's what irks me.
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When I said better hardware support (I also work in IT) I was referring to things like your laptop. You said it yourself, 2000 was a bit tricky to get to work right on you laptop. XP would have been a breaze to install.
Actually, it's not. I recently reworked a laptop almost identical to mine at work for a client, and I had to tell XP what to do with the modem, the NIC, and the video card. And even then, I had to uninstall and reinstall the video driver three times before it would go into 1280x800 (it's a wide-screen).
Feh.
Yes, Windows 2000 was a bit trickier, but XP is still no picnic. And you know what? There's no reason hardware has to be like that. Laptops these days all say "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP". For that I fault the manufacturers.
Designing computer hardware SPECIFICALLY for ONE AND ONLY ONE operating system is collossally stupid in my opinion.
You know how hard it was to install Slackware on my laptop? Put CD in. "Setup". Tell it to install. Select what packages I want. Install. Put CD#2 in so it can install KDE. Go through dummy-proof step-by-step X.org and LILO setup. Reboot. Install Madwifi drivers for integrated Atheros wireless. Done.
Total time: 40 minutes. Most of it listening to the CD spin.
All this on a machine "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP". Hell, it takes less time and effort to install/setup Slackware Linux on it than it does ANY flavor of Windows.
Now, that's not to say that XP doesn't set up like a "breaze" [sic] (;)) on some desktops or even laptops. It's true that where laptops are concerned that it probably is easier in most cases to get XP to work than Windows 2000. But you never know until you try to install it. And that's not really worth it to me.
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By the way. I am actually installing 2000 on my laptop right now. All this XP talk has really pissed me off. I think all your ranting is rubbing off on me. :lol:
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Well, that's the idea, after all.
Eventually people either agree with me, or get tired of it and ignore me. :lol:
Anyway, what kinda laptop is it?
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ITZ C4LL3D D3M0ST33NZ PR0PAG4NDA L00Z0RZ!!11
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It's an Averatec AV3360-EH1. It's on of their 4.5lb 12inch screen dohickies. It's got the centrino setup with a 1.6 Pentium M and an 80gig HD. It's great for my consulting business (I'm on the go a lot) and it runs pretty fast anf very reliably. My wife has the same one but with the AMD setup (2000+ and so forth). Mine is by no means a gaming laptop but I can still play the original Unreal Tounament at high settings which isn't bad for Extreme Graphics 2. :D
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Another thing about my laptop. It has a DVD burner and I use it all the time. I didn't think I woudl use it that much because I rarely use cd burners unless I am burning an ISO. But I never realized how much more usefull a blank 4.4gig DVD is compared to a 700mb CD.
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Oh man, no kiddin.
That's something I'm learning to appreciate.
What do you think of the Pentium M processors? From what I've seen, I haven't been very impressed.
My own laptop has a P4 3.06 ghz hyperthreading processor in it, which is hot and power hungry.... but I'll take that over a sluggish bear that still costs an arm and a leg any day, I think.
I don't really give a crap about battery life.
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Are you guys just going to talk about computers and operating systems?
Sheesh... geeks :rolleyes
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So BizB, what's the horsepower of your weedwhacker?
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I LOVE the Pentium M. I've had one with a Celeron M and was actually quite impressed. But the Celeron M always runs at top speed where as the Pentium M runs from 600 to 1600mhz (in my case) which conserves battery tramendously. I went from about 2 hours with the Celeron M to over 3.5 on this guy with the Pentium M! And with 2mb of L2 cache that 1.6 feels more like a 2.6 on a desktop. And they seem to run a little cooler the others as well. Battery life is important to me by the way. I might be reformating a customers hard drive and I need all the battery life I can get to play games while I wait for XP to re-install all of its unnecessary apps. :lol:
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So BizB, what's the horsepower of your weedwhacker?
Zero. I had a vasectomy a week ago - Friday last.
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So BizB, what's the horsepower of your weedwhacker?
Zero. I had a vasectomy a week ago - Friday last.
(http://www.guildhaven.org/images/smilies/spit.gif)
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So BizB, what's the horsepower of your weedwhacker?
Zero. I had a vasectomy a week ago - Friday last.
All right! Now you are a sports model, that can only mean repeated performance tests ya know! :)
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So BizB, what's the horsepower of your weedwhacker?
Zero. I had a vasectomy a week ago - Friday last.
*snerk*
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Way to hijack a thread, Biz.
I have to say... this is the first thread I've seen where we shift gears so swiftly from talking about hardware and operating systems to discussing the status of your balls in only a few short posts.
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Way to hijack a thread, Biz.
I have to say... this is the first thread I've seen where we shift gears so swiftly from talking about hardware and operating systems to discussing the status of your balls in only a few short posts.
We still are talking about hardware... kind of.
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Just think... a couple of wrong snips an inch in either direction and we could have been talking about software.
:shock:
EDIT: Instead of a RAMdisk.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
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penor penor penor
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</bobert>
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I had a suspicion what you were saying, but I just had to look it up.
1. p3n0r
More of the same lame-ass "1337" online language, referring to the more common pen0r or penor, meaning "penis"
Anyone who might venture to use this terminology is an idiot, and should be dealt with by severe beatings or vivisection.
Idiot: "p3n0r!!!!1111oneoneonewonwonwon"
Sane person: "I will kill you now."
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OMG WAT U MAEN??????????????????////
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Best. Threadjack. EVAR!
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Hey, why is this thread about fashion in the Technology section anyway?
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You know those questions you're not supposed to ask?
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It's not. It's just a mic check.
Teste.
Teste.
One
Two
Three??
:shock:
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This thread will self-construct in 10 seconds.
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(http://www.angrymonkey.net/angrymonkey.net/putfileshere/llama.jpg)
(http://www.jmsequinephotography.com/images/Pets/new/Baby%20Llama%204x5%2004.jpg)
(http://www.kconnors.com/albums/wildlife/duck.sized.jpg)
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Inverticle, on the subject of Linux and Laptops, this (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8462) is a pretty interesting article about a guy getting Ubuntu to work on a Thinkpad.
The article itself is an interesting read, but the best part is what he has to say about XP near the end of the article. :lol:
As part of my work, I had to install and use Windows XP this past week. I had not used a Windows desktop for a couple of years for anything but testing. I found using it painful. I finally reorganized the program menu like my GNOME desktop so I could find programs easier. I installed Zone Alarm's free firewall, Grissoft's free Anti-Virus program and Spybot S&D. I made sure every port was closed or at least was running in a stealth mode. I was surprised at the number of times Zone Alarm warned me that an application I just launched attempted to access the Internet. That's really freaky.
It took about a day before the system got infested with spyware and icons showed up on the desktop leading to various Web sites. I couldn't believe it. Then, the system began slowing down--in fact, grinding down. I fed Windows 1 GB of fast DDR RAM, but it didn't seem to matter. Finally, I defragmented the hard drive, which took an hour.
Soon, programs began to freeze and in the top bar I saw the message "Not responding". I waited a little while and they eventually came back. I couldn't believe how many times I had to stop work while XP gathered itself. And this is what media analysts consider ready for the desktop?
I know I'm not the only one who has written this, but I'll do it again. If the major manufacturers put as much engineering into the Linux desktop as they put into Windows, they would produce a superior product for their customers. I'm sorry I don't have a billion dollars to give you for marketing so you can keep your stock prices up. Maybe you could make it the old-fashioned way--by offering a superior product.
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Stereotypes exist because they are true. Always. Geeks and nerds really are the same thing, and they all look like losers in their geeknerd clothes. Everybody knows that. I once saw a geeknerd pick a booger and eat it. Then he pushed his hornrims up his nose and snickered in this creepy way they have. I once peed on a programmer. DEBUG THAT, I said, rather forcefully.
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Hey Demo, I posted in the 'Linux Distro' thread about my current setup. I put Kubuntu on my laptop and it's great!. I really like it. I then put Ubuntu on my desktop so I can have both KDE and Gnome.
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What I thought was interesting is the edubuntu that they have as a related project. It looks interesting. (I like classroom tech, go figure.)
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Cool.
One of the things that's turned me off Ubuntu is the fact that it's entirely Gnome for the desktop, and I'm not much of a fan of Gnome.
If Kubuntu is good though, that might be worth trying.
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Kubuntu is exactly the same as Ubuntu but with KDE. So if Gnome was the problem for you, then you should really like Kubuntu.